


Something Worth Saving

by superfluouskeys



Category: PCBH, Prisoner (Cell Block H), Prisoner (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Post-Break Up, for real there are no other fics for them???, here i go making trouble for myself, sorry not sorry suffer with me please!, well anyway i made myself cry at 4 in the morning so, wheeeee i wrote more whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-07 02:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12830934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Sometimes she's able to fool herself.  She'll remember how awful she was and tell herself it was necessary, unavoidable.  She'll grasp onto the disgust pooling in her gut—disgust for herself, for her own cowardice—and she'll redirect it at Joan, use a thousand different voices swirling around in her head to convince herself that that's where it belongs.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just started watching PCBH: Mostly Just Skipping To Joan Edition to deal with the devastation of Wentworth and what did I get but more devastation? All Joans Deserve Better. Also this fic was very fun to write and I hope you enjoy it!

Sometimes people still ask her about it.  Sudden, too loud, inappropriate, and she struggles to stay the clattering of her teacup or the quivering of her wine glass as her hands begin to tremble.

"Yes, I lived with her for awhile," she agrees, and doesn't trust herself to sip her drink.  It surprises her every time—she can't imagine when these people even met her—but Joan is the sort of person who leaves a strong impression wherever she goes.

"I don't envy you!" someone will always say, out of the side of his mouth like he's just made some brilliantly subversive observation.  Everyone but Terri laughs uproariously.

"But is it true what they say about her?" the original questioner usually presses.  "Is she really...you know."

And here, Terri struggles, for she remembers what Joan once said to her—a statement that filled her heart with a curious kind of warmth, a precarious, wavering echo of strength.  But she also remembers what Joan has to put up with day in and day out, the mere shadow of which proved too much for Terri to endure. 

"Oh, I wouldn't know anything about that," she says, and she's pretty sure a prisoner said those exact words to her a couple of times, with the jutted out chin and wide eyes that indicate at least partial guilt.

But of course no one here would know about such things.  Terri wonders whether even she would if not for Joan's keen eye for lying.

"But what was it like?" someone else presses.  "She must have been dreadful to live with!"

Terri very nearly drops her teacup, and so she sets it down.  She feels Barry's hand on her back, a comfort and a warning, and searches for a smile that seems genuine enough to fool an untrained eye.  "Oh, no, not at all," she shakes her head.  "The rent was good, and she was always very kind to me."

"Can't imagine why," mutters someone, or "bet she had the hots for you," or "what exactly did she charge?"

It doesn't matter.  It's always more or less the same.  Terri's stomach lurches, and she manages a pained grimace until the subject is changed.

Later on, alone with Barry, she rewrites her history in shades.  _Nothing like that_ doesn't quite cut it—Joan ruined that for her by barging into her office demanding an explanation, demanding as she always has to be taken seriously.  _Unrequited_ makes Terri sick to her stomach, and anyway, she thinks, Barry saw how devastated she was when at last she confessed.  Surely he wouldn't be so simpleminded as to believe that.

 _An experiment gone wrong_ , though, flies almost too well.  _A silly little schoolgirl crush that got out of hand_ —that's actually Barry's description, and by that point in the evening Terri is usually a little drunk and far more exhausted than the actual events of the evening can account for, and so she agrees sweetly and touches his face, only she quickly finds that that won't do at all.  When she touches his face all she can think of is the way Joan used to cradle the curve of Terri's cheek in her hand, sudden, soft, and sweet, with this strange, disbelieving set to her brow that set Terri's heart aflutter.

Taking his hands does the trick, and pulling him towards the bedroom shuts him up for the night.

Terri soon finds that it's all too easy to erase some of the best months of her life.  Everything falls into place so neatly that it feels like a sign from the universe, a reassurance that she's done the right thing.  Barry gobbles up her gentle revisions with an eagerness that sickens her, her parents are only too happy to pretend the whole thing was a terrible dream, and everyone who's ever met Joan is practically foaming at the mouth for a chance to mock her, a chance to ascertain that Terri couldn't possibly have had anything in common with her other than a physical address.

Sometimes she's able to fool herself.  An hour, an instant, or even a full day.  She'll remember how awful she was with a guilt that twists the very walls around her, and then she'll tell herself it was necessary, unavoidable.  She'll nod firmly to herself, grasp onto the disgust pooling in her gut—disgust for herself, for her own cowardice—and she'll redirect it at Joan, use a thousand different voices swirling around in her head to convince herself that that's where it belongs.

Once she goes a full week firmly believing her own heinous lies.  It begins on Saturday night after a party, during which the guests make fun of Terri's weird old flatmate, and after which Barry starts talking of marriage, and ends the next Friday when she runs into her former coworkers at the market.  She asks how things at Wentworth are going, and gets an "oh, you know, the usual.  Heard you and Ferguson had a falling out, by the way.  Frankly I don't know how you put up with that for so long!"

And Terri laughs and shakes her head and says, "Oh, come on, she's not so bad."

One of them sets her jaw and takes Terri by the shoulders.  "You don't have to play nice to me, love," she says gravely.  "I know you were trying to be nice to her, Lord knows we've all tried.  I only hope she didn't give you too much trouble."

Terri doesn't remember what she says, or how the conversation ends.  She clutches her bag of groceries to her chest to stay her shaking hands and instead of going home she goes over to Joan's house and sits down on the porch steps and cries bitterly until long after the sun sets.

She's mostly cried herself out by the time Joan gets there, but she hasn't the strength to move, nor even to wipe away tears still drying on her cheeks.  She leans her head dismally against the porch railing, still cradling her bag of groceries.

The car door closes.  Footsteps crunch in the grass, stop.  Joan's frumpy old shoes come into view in the light of the moon.

Joan inhales as though to speak, hesitates, sighs.

"I'll have you know your boyfriend already phoned me at work," she says after a moment, in that way that indicates she's trying to sound brusque, and knows she's failing miserably. 

And here Terri thought she was all out of tears for the evening.  Her face crumples and she covers it senselessly.  "God, I'm so sorry, Joan," she whispers.  Too late.  Far, far too little.

She can just imagine Joan's range of expression.  Gruff exasperation quickly fading into a resigned softness of heart she tries so desperately to hide.  Terri knows very well that she was always pushing and pulling at her, willing her further out of that protective shell, without so much as a second thought to why she might have needed it.

And now Joan is left with no way forward yet again.  Terri complained when she was cold and complained when she was kind, so uncertain of herself that she foisted her uncertainty upon Joan.  She doesn't even know what she's doing here now, what she hoped for or what she expected, and she can feel the silent question, _what do you want from me?,_ practically radiating off of Joan, yet another she can't even answer in the privacy of her own mind.

Terri drags her sleeve across her face and sniffles.  Joan hasn't moved.  Terri can't bear to look up from her shoes, even in moonlight.  "I wanted you...I wanted _someone_ to know it isn't true.  All those things I said, I..."  But there aren't words enough to apologize for even a fraction of it.  Her betrayal was so thorough, so prolonged, that Terri knows very well there's no making up for it.  A few carefully chosen words and she could erase what they shared completely, but Terri doubts there's anything she could say or do to erase that she wanted to do just that.

"I don't see how it matters," says Joan quietly.

"It matters to me!" Terri looks up at last.  The moonlight blurs and focuses around the severe outline of Joan's head and shoulders as she blinks away her fresh bout of tears.

Joan is silent for a moment.  Then she sighs again and approaches.  She kneels down in front of Terri, the harsh lines of her face coming into view as Terri's eyes adjust.  Terri's breath catches, not sure what to expect, not sure what she dares to hope for.

She feels rather than sees Joan's hand, reaching out, hesitating, tensing.  "Perhaps...you'd better go," she whispers, pained.

Terri reaches for Joan's face, has never known how to hesitate even when she should.  She cups the strong curve of her jaw, gasps audibly when she finds a tear beneath her thumb.  "Joan, please," she shakes her head.  What is she asking?  What is she doing here?

Against her palm she can feel the little twitch of Joan's lips that means she's pushed too far, and ought to have known that.  But Joan takes Terri's hand and squeezes it gently.  "I'll...take you home, if you like."

Terri stifles a sob against her fist, breathes deeply as she feels cold resignation settling into her bones, a chill that has nothing to do with the night air.  She nods, struggling to steady her breathing, and Joan stands and takes her groceries out of her lap.

While Terri is still busy getting to her feet, leaning heavily on the porch railing, and unable to trust her quaking knees, Joan sets the bag on the ground at her feet, shrugs off the oversized jacket of her work uniform, and reaches up to drape it over Terri's shoulders.  Stunned, Terri's hands fall to Joan's shoulders, the crisp fabric of an ill-fitted button-down a familiar texture that sends a fresh wave of sorrow washing over her.

Joan freezes, hands still grasping the lapels of her own jacket.  She has few tells, but in the stillness of the night, Terri is sure she hears Joan's breath catch.

"Bet you're not used to ladies towering over you," she breathes, impulsively, with the nervous kind of lightness of an inappropriate joke.

But Joan lets out a surprised huff of amusement, and the corners of her lips twitch upward briefly.  "No," she agrees quietly. 

In response, Terri feels herself beginning to smile genuinely for the first time in months.  There's a tension hanging between them now, one she's both desperate and loath to broach, and what's more, she can _feel_ it.

When the whole world is saying one thing, she wants to tell Joan, it's easy to believe it must be true.  But Joan doesn't understand that, because Joan is so insistent upon not allowing others to dictate her opinions that she is often a contrarian merely on principle.  I pushed you away because I couldn't bear to live against everyone's wishes any longer, she wants to say, because I was frightened of how much more I had to lose.  But the things that frighten Joan run far darker than those that frighten most people, and by comparison Terri has always felt a terrible coward.

Everything has been so much easier without Joan, and Terri has mistaken easier for better.  It's easy to lie, easy to reassure, easy to fall back into the familiar patterns of romance with a man who adores her.  It's easy to go back to thinking of what everyone else wants from her, and to stop thinking about what she wants for herself.

She relinquishes her height advantage to draw closer, sure she can't coax Joan to close the gap.  Her fingers seek out the fringe at the back of Joan's neck, and now she's sure she can hear Joan's shuddery inhalation, sure she can just make out the fluttering of Joan's eyelids in the near-darkness.

"Terri," she breathes, barely even a whisper, barely even a sound, and Terri can feel Joan's hands trembling where they're still clutching at her coat.

Terri threads her fingers possessively through Joan's hair and kisses her soundly, and Joan's reaction is immediate.  She moves rapidly from clutching at her coat to clutching at Terri's waist, drawing their bodies flush, practically bending Terri backward with how passionately she returns the kiss.

And oh, Terri can _feel_ it, feel it everywhere, from her head to the tips of her toes and everywhere in between, and how she ever convinced herself for even a second that this wasn't everything she never knew how to want is beyond her comprehension.

They come apart gasping, Joan's fingers digging into Terri's sides, Terri's arms wrapped tightly about Joan's neck, and she wants more, needs more, needs to drag Joan inside by her tie and relieve her of the ill-fitting clothes that do little to disguise the figure underneath, needs to mess up her perfectly-coiffed hair and her perfectly-pressed clothes and her perfectly-shined shoes and her perfectly-made bed and her perfectly controlled life all over again, and—

And now suddenly she's crying again, and Joan is holding her like she's utterly unphased by the sudden change, one arm about her waist and one hand cradling her head, so familiar, so real it aches.

"You know what's terrible, Joan?" she weeps into Joan's shirt.  "I just...took it all back!  I just took it all back, everything we had, and everyone just—!  They just let me do it, Joan!"  She pulls away, still clutching tightly to Joan's shoulders, certain she'll slip away at the slightest chance.  The moon is brighter now, bright enough to see the way Joan doesn't quite meet her eyes, the way tears are still glistening on her cheeks.

"Everyone but you," Terri presses.  "Because you know the truth, don't you, Joan?"

The telltale twitch of her lips, and then Joan wrenches herself from Terri's grasp at last.  "Don't you see, Terri?" she snaps, low and harsh.  "None of it mattered to me!  Your snob friends laughing at me, oh, I've heard it all before.  Your fancy parties and your long lunches, sure, fine, I'm an old bore!  Even your idiot boyfriend and his pushy demeanour and his hideous moustache, I tolerated it all, because I loved you!  I loved you because you never treated me the way everyone else does!  You never mocked me, never flinched when I touched you, never called me a—"

Joan shoves her fist against her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle a sob.

"A _freak_ ," she snarls.

Terri covers her own mouth as Joan rounds on her, gaze piercing even in near-darkness.

"Because when someone does that, Terri, you can never forget it," she continues fiercely.  "It doesn't matter what came before, and it doesn't matter what comes after, you'll always remember it, always wonder if that's—" she gestures vaguely, holds open her hands in defeat, and when she speaks again, her voice has lost all its vigour.

"I'm difficult and stubborn, and...and vengeful, and petty, and I _hate_ nearly everyone I meet, and I know that, Terri, but that's not why they call me a freak," Joan shakes her head slowly.  " _The_ Freak."

"Joan—" Terri pleads, but there's nothing she can say, nothing she can do.

Joan approaches again, looming now, all squared shoulders and gritted teeth, almost terrifying in her conviction.  "They call me that because I loved you.  Because I still love you.  Still want you.  If things had played out a bit differently I'd have given you exactly what you came here for.  But I told you once and I will tell you again, Terri, I have never forced myself on _anyone_." 

She shakes her head, chuckles incredulously.  "Women are afraid of me because of what I am, and yeah, sure I've used that to my advantage from time to time.  Some foulmouthed prisoner gives me trouble, I say, you pull that shit again and I'll do exactly what you're afraid of.  A fate worse than death, apparently!  But I'm not a monster, Terri.  They're afraid because they think they can catch what I have, this...this _sickness_ that made me fall in love with you, that gives everyone the right to treat me like the scum of the earth when it isn't true!"

She's barely raised her voice above a dark whisper, barely paid any mind to the neighbours or the late hour, but now her words seem to echo in the stillness, and she's left fuming and panting with fists clenched at her sides, fresh tears glistening in the moonlight.

"And sometimes," Joan continues, with forced quietness, "I even understand."  She nods slowly, takes another step forward, almost menacingly.  "I mean, who'd want to live like this?  Who could bear it, just to be with me?  A...weak, gutless old woman, I think you said."  She looms over Terri now. "I...disgust you," she sneers, "isn't that right, Terri?"

The pain is so great Terri feels her knees buckling beneath her.  _No, no, no_ , she thinks she might be saying, but it sounds like senseless blubbering, the raving of a madwoman.  She's doubled over now, arms wrapped tightly about herself as she finds she still has endless tears to shed tonight.  _No_ , she can't bring herself to say truthfully, because it's exactly what she said, exactly what she thought she meant, for an hour or an instant or even a full day.

She was so sure Barry was different, so sure Joan hated him just because he was a man, because Terri could like men and Joan never could, so sure he'd understand when she told him even as she kept her carefully-guarded secret, so sure there was no particular reason she wasn't telling him even as Joan stood weepy and disheveled before her, demanding an explanation, demanding as she always has to be taken seriously.

"It's me!" Terri nearly shrieks at last.  "It's all me!  I disgust myself, Joan!"  Now it's her turn to hear her voice resounding back at her in the stillness of the night, and she remembers herself belatedly.  She rights herself, wiping furiously at her face with the sleeve of Joan's coat, still hanging protectively about her shoulders.  She keeps her head bowed, ever the coward.

"You're right, of course," Terri continues softly.  "I was dreadful to you, and I don't deserve your forgiveness.  I just...needed you to know it wasn't true, what I said."

Terri swallows hard, and summons every last drop of courage she has ever possessed before she can meet Joan's gaze.  She's unsurprised to find it mostly unchanged.  Joan has few tells.

"I love you," Terri tells her, and tries to pour the love she feels into the words, tries to release a fraction of it, that she mightn't have to carry the burden of it in her chest forever.  "I love you, and I want you, and I..." she shakes her head, swallows again, "I betrayed you.  And I betrayed myself.  Because I wanted to want something easier."

She feels rather than sees the twitch of Joan's hand at her side, and Terri has never known how to hesitate, even when she should.  She grabs the hand Joan hasn't quite offered and brings it up to her lips to kiss her knuckles.  Joan doesn't move.

"You know," says Terri, with a very weepy attempt at a smile, more than likely lost nevertheless to the darkness, "I tried to play at being strong because I wanted to be like you, but I've never really been alone for very long like you have."  She kisses Joan's hand again.  "Perhaps I ought to try that for awhile."

Sudden, soft, and sweet, there's Joan's unclaimed hand, cupping the curve of Terri's cheek, and Terri can just barely make out the subtle furrow of Joan's brow, and the faintest beginnings of a smile at the corners of her lips.

"Don't stay alone too long, hey?" says Joan, gently.  "It can turn you into a right nuisance to live with."

Laughter comes as a welcome surprise, and it bubbles up somewhere in Terri's chest like a revelation.  Impulsive as ever, she throws her arms about Joan's neck and kisses her cheek, once, then twice, a bit longer, and when at last she drags herself away, there's that tension again.  Joan's lips remain slightly parted and Terri's breath catches audibly, Joan's hands hover just shy of Terri's waist and Terri's fingers itch for the softness of Joan's hair, the breadth of her shoulders, the musculature of her thighs... 

Terri inhales sharply, tries and fails to drag her gaze away from Joan's lips, warring quite ineffectually with the pull between them that practically begs Terri to close the negligible distance once and for all.

Joan inhales as though to speak, hesitates, and tightens her lower lip just slightly.  Terri feels the change in a very particular location.

"Hadn't you better...put your groceries away?" says Joan.

For just an instant, Terri has the good sense to hesitate.  She knew from the beginning that she didn't deserve Joan's forgiveness, and yet Joan, who isn't exactly well known for forgiving anyone, is offering her a window yet again.   It's what she wanted, dreamed of, perhaps, but not at all what she expected, nor even dared to hope for.

Perhaps...perhaps it's simpler than Terri is making it out to be.  Perhaps Terri wasn't strong enough to stay with Joan because she felt, somewhere deep down, that she didn't deserve to have what—who—she really wanted.  The question...is she strong enough now?

Terri's hands travel from the back of Joan's neck over her shoulders and settle themselves upon her tie.  "Quite right," she agrees, with a suggestive tilt of her head.  She takes a step back and gives the tie a gentle tug.

The smirk Joan tries very unsuccessfully to suppress is worth ten times the trouble they might face tomorrow.

Joan carries Terri's half-forgotten bag of groceries inside and the perishables in what was once Terri's side of the fridge, still left empty.  Terri never quite lets go of her sleeve, never quite steps out of her orbit, sure that Joan might change her mind and send her away at the slightest provocation.

But once Joan closes the refrigerator door and turns to take her in, both of them fully illuminated by the house lights, Terri feels a fresh wave of certainty wash over her.  She laces her fingers with Joan's and draws her close.  "How I've missed you, Joan," she says, against Joan's lips.

"Terri..." Joan breathes.  "Terri, listen, this isn't a good idea..."

Terri bows her head, rests it beneath Joan's chin with a heavy sigh.  "Perhaps not," she says.  She breathes Joan in, heady with the tantalizing familiarity of Joan's scent, before she meets Joan's gaze once more.  "Do you want me to go?"

Joan considers her for a moment that seems to drag on forever, and Terri is sure the waiting alone will kill her.  But then Joan's expression begins to change, so gradually that Terri doesn't quite notice until the full force of it is upon her.  She takes Terri in again, steady intention in the path her gaze travels, and Terri _feels_ it, from her head down to the tips of her toes.  Once more she takes the lapels of her own coat between her fingers, and removes the coat from Terri's shoulders, casting it aside upon a chair with an abandon that's entirely out of character for her.

"No," she answers at last.

Terri doesn't bother to hide her smile.

Joan curls a hand possessively into Terri's hair as she draws nearer, the subtle furrow of her brow the only remaining sign of hesitation. 

"Is something the matter?" Terri asks her, as her fingers settle themselves at the waistband of Joan's skirt.

"Are you sure this is what you want, Terri?" Joan asks her, leaning in so close Terri can practically feel the words against her lips.

Terri is reminded of the thought that struck her earlier, and, impulsive as ever, feels compelled to put it into words.  "Joan," she says, barely resisting the urge to kiss her just yet, only because she knows she'll never want to stop, "you are everything I never even knew how to want."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops I'm trash so I wrote more! Nothing like crying about a ship 30 years late! Suffer with me!

Sometime before dawn, when the light through the window is still grey and uncertain, Joan wakes with cold shoulders and tugs at blankets that defy her wishes.  She blinks away sleep, confounded irritation settling into the lines of her face, and tugs harder.

She's fairly certain her heart stops when her efforts are met with a drowsy hum of contentment.

Joan turns over carefully and props herself up on one arm, disbelief icy cold in her veins.  Terri shifts in her sleep with another drawn out hum, and her arm drags the stolen covers along with it as it drapes itself across Joan's hips.

Joan shivers involuntarily, an incredibly belated reminder of her nakedness, and blinks once, twice.

She reaches out with a shaking hand, hesitates, traces the outline of Terri's messy curls against the pillow, and withdraws her fingertips to her lips.

This moment feels familiar.

How long ago was it now?  Nearly a year, perhaps.  How quickly everything can fall together and then apart again.  Joan has become very accustomed to that.  One doesn't go through life with a presence like hers expecting an easy time of it.

Terri was a little different then, too, Joan thinks.  Nervous.  Less grounded.  She'd never have stolen the covers, Joan is sure of that.  Indeed, Joan remembers waking to find her still there, still real, but sleeping like a figurine, styled by foreign hands to lie in a particular manner, taking up the appropriate amount of space without affecting anything around her.

Joan lies back into her pillow and sighs.  Memories of mornings give way to memories of the nights that preceded them.  It's not that Joan hasn't experienced her fair share of wide-eyed young women, eager for the novelty of such an encounter--she attracts that type more often than not, if she's being honest--nor even that she'd spent a particularly long time alone, untouched, and openly reviled before Terri came along. 

What got to her that night--really touched her heart, so suddenly and so deeply that she felt very glad she'd demanded the lights remain off--was the _something more_ between them, beyond physical attraction or shared endeavours or excitement of the moment.  Most people don't understand Joan, don't even try, and she's grown accustomed to that. 

That Terri should appear in the midst of her existence, that she should try, and often even succeed--that felt extraordinary.

There was a moment, frozen in silhouette, when Terri brushed her cold fingertips along the inside of Joan's thigh, experimenting, exploring.  Joan bit the inside of her mouth to stay a sharp intake of breath, but was rendered quickly undone when Terri combed her cold fingers through the wiry hair at the apex of Joan's thighs, and rested her palm, icy and soft, over the unbearable warmth between them.  Then, like a revelation, she breathed, "Oh, Joan..."

Instinctively Joan reached out in the darkness for the outline of Terri's messy curls in the light from the other room, hesitated, and withdrew her hand to her own face, in some vain effort to hide her sudden onslaught of emotion from the watchful eyes of a darkened room.

In the present moment, Joan swallows and blinks away the vestiges of tears.  Might as well get up before Terri wakes, in fact.  It won't do to have her seeing Joan in any state of sentimentality.  Logically Joan knows that last night was probably a colossal and far-reaching sort of mistake, and that to expect any better than the worst this morning would be foolhardy at the very kindest.

She has a short shift this afternoon, a feeble gesture to make up for the neverending string of doubles over the last couple of weeks.  No one likes to work in the summer, but Joan would rather work than sit at home alone and contemplate the misery of her existence.  She can't decide if it's better or worse at the moment, pacing the kitchen like a madwoman while the kettle heats, with nothing to do but wonder and worry about things that are beyond her control.

She makes a pot of coffee, pours two cups, and spends a full minute leaning against the refrigerator door hating herself for still buying cream even though Terri was the only one who liked it.

"You...never did find those pictures you promised me," says Terri from the foyer.  Joan had forgotten how softly she walks.  "Of you when you were younger."

Joan retrieves the offending cream at last and pours it into one of the coffee cups.  She opens her mouth to respond, but as soon as she sets eyes on Terri, her words catch in her throat.  Terri is clutching a perfume bottle in her hands, one Joan had intended, in varying degrees of ill temper, to throw against the wall or to send back to her, yet never quite managed to remove from its spot on the bedside table where Terri left it.

When Joan doesn't respond, Terri takes a few hesitant steps into the living room.  Joan realizes, belatedly, that she's stolen one of Joan's work shirts, and again anything she might have thought to say is washed from her mind.  She freezes for a second, open-mouthed and staring like a damned fool, before she closes her eyes, curls her fingers into a fist upon the kitchen counter, and inhales deeply in a vain attempt to regain control of the situation.

"You can have that back, if you want it," says Joan at last, eyes still closed.  "I meant to, I just..."  She opens her fingers in a gesture of defeat.

"I came by before," says Terri.

Joan frowns, contemplates the two coffee cups before her.  "I know."

"And I called."  Terri is closing in on her, and Joan has yet to find a way of taking her in.  "You answered once, but I...it was so ridiculous, I kept calling and then I found I didn't know what to say."

Terri's hand comes into view, wrapped about the neck of the bottle as she places it between them on the counter.  Joan reaches for her, never impulsive, never without purpose.  It's a signal, one she thinks Terri understands--that she, too, wants to connect, even as words continue to fail her.

 _What are you trying to do?_ she wants to demand, because even though on the surface, she knows, just like before, she hasn't the faintest idea of what's brought Terri crashing to this conclusion, or what might send her crashing back. 

 _What are you going to tell your boyfriend?_ a vengeful part of her longs to wonder, but she mercifully manages to swallow that one, at least for the moment.  There have been enough harsh words between them, and Joan privately thinks she might never forgive herself if she were to ruin this with only her foul temper to blame.

In the end she's saved from saying anything by the phone ringing.

Joan squeezes Terri's hand lightly before she withdraws.  "I made us coffee," she says simply, but it takes every sliver of control she's ever possessed not to drag her fingers over Terri's shoulder or down her back as she passes to answer the phone.

"Hello?'

"Is she with you?"

Joan hates his voice.  She hates that she's begun to recognize it.  "I beg your pardon?"

"You know I mean Terri!"  What's his last name?  She'll loathe him still more if she can't call him anything but Barry.  Barry and Terri.  How darling.  "She hasn't come home.  Is she with you?"

"Isn't it interesting," says Joan airily, "that I'm the one you ring everytime your girlfriend runs off on you?  How must that feel for you, I wonder?"

"How dare you?" he sneers.  "You're being remarkably cavalier.  She's been missing all night!  She could be hurt!"

Joan clicks her tongue.  "Your concern is touching."  She fully intends to continue baiting him, but Terri has appeared in the foyer.  She prods at Joan's arm, a silent reminder not to be needlessly cruel, and so, with a pointed roll of her eyes, Joan concedes.  "And entirely unnecessary.  She's fine, as you might have guessed based on my...cavalier attitude."

"You...!  Let me speak to her!"

Emboldened by the vindication that Terri is, indeed, here, and wearing Joan's shirt, no less, Joan turns quite casually to Terri and offers her the phone.

But Terri backs away, like a reflex, and all Joan's bravado abandons her in an instant.

"Please," Terri shakes her head.

Fleetingly, Joan wonders whether she would deny Terri anything.

"And what makes you think she wishes to speak with you?" Joan counters into the receiver, missing little more than a beat.

A huff, a disgruntled sigh.  "I see it's true what they say about you."

Joan chuckles genuinely.  She's remembered his surname at last.  "Mr. Lockwood, I'm a prison officer.  There's nothing anyone could say about me that I haven't heard."

"Filthy degenerate--"

"I stand corrected," Joan cuts him off pleasantly.  "Very original.  You'd make an excellent criminal, Mr. Lockwood.  Good day."  She hangs up, perhaps with just a touch more gusto than is strictly required.

"You were awfully harsh," Terri admonishes half-heartedly.  She's already retreated halfway across the room.

Joan scoffs.  "You want me to talk on the phone for you," she retorts as she joins Terri on the sofa, "you get what you ask for."

Terri concedes with a small breath of something reminiscent of amusement.  "Fair enough.  And thank you."

Joan takes up her coffee cup and contemplates it for a long moment before she decides to speak again.  "What are you going to tell him?"

Terri sips her coffee, thinks awhile.  "That I'm leaving him."

Joan bites back a series of unhelpful retorts and settles upon, "Is that all?"

Terri frowns, nods slowly.  "All he needs to know, I think."  It's odd that she isn't talking much, and it sets Joan's nerves on edge.  Before it was always Terri coaxing things out of Joan.  Joan is painfully aware that the alternative is well out of her depth.

Mercifully, Terri does continue eventually, but the silence between phrases feels heavy and uncomfortable.  "I said it all before, actually," she says slowly, drums her fingers on the side of her cup.  "How I liked him but I didn't know if I could love him.  Not like..."

She scoffs.  Joan used to think it was a gentler sound when Terri scoffed than when Joan did, but she's since learned Terri can be twice as callous as Joan ever was, and somehow knowing that changes everything about her.

"Well.  And now I don't even really like him anymore."

 _And me?_ Joan doesn't dare ask.

"I don't know how you stand it," Terri continues suddenly, all in a rush, "people being so cruel about you all the time when you haven't even done anything."

Joan chuckles, surprised.  "Don't suppose I've ever known it any other way."

Terri looks up, wide-eyed.  "Really?  Not even when you were a kid?"

Joan averts her eyes, shrugs.

Terri sighs.  "I'm sorry, Joan.  I guess I didn't realize.  I..."

She puts down her coffee, gingerly, like she's afraid the little noise the cup makes against the table might shatter some unspeakable thing that hangs between them.  She returns her hands to her lap and proceeds to wring them together as she struggles to continue the thought she's begun.

"I wanted so badly to pretend that there was nothing different about it...being with you, I mean.  It felt so...so easy, and so wonderful, and so exciting at first, that anything bad that might have happened around us just didn't seem to matter, so I..."

Joan looks up.  Terri meets her eyes hesitantly.

"I guess I sort of pretended it didn't matter, even when it did," she shrugs, and offers Joan the faintest beginnings of a smile.  "And all the little things just kept..." she gestures vaguely, "and then when there were bigger things, I just..." she sighs, averts her eyes again.  "I panicked."

Joan reaches out haltingly, places a hand lightly on Terri's back, and Terri practically collapses against Joan's shoulder.  It's too much, really--all of it too much to take in all at once, and rationally she knows she's just setting herself up to make another string of stupid decisions where Terri is concerned.  But the alternative--to turn her away, to deny herself this moment, the joy of Terri back where she belongs, with her hair against Joan's cheek and the cream she likes in her side of the fridge--is unthinkable.

So, against her better judgement, Joan cradles Terri's head in her free hand and kisses the softness of the curls that spill over her forehead.  Terri looks up at her with wide, shining eyes and a hand almost accidentally gripping Joan's thigh, and, divorced from all reason, Joan kisses her lips.

It's truly dreadful, the feeling that seizes Joan like a vise-grip around her heart, when their lips touch.  It tears through her, so intense it's painful, and Joan feels her fingers curling in Terri's hair without her permission, feels her entire body contracting in response to Terri's fingers digging into her leg, and she's lost, she's irretrievable, just as hopeless as she was before Terri ever hurt her.

The pressure on Joan's thigh increases and before Joan has time to process that, she is acutely preoccupied by the sudden presence of Terri's bare legs on either side of her own.  Her hands fall naturally to Terri's exposed thighs for just an instant before, as instinctive as it is irrational, she flinches and withdraws.

She looks up at Terri, sure of how pathetic she must seem but unable even to try to contain her confusion.  A tiny voice in the back of her mind comes screeching to the forefront.  She can't do this again.  She can't go from everything to nothing to everything and back.  As certainly as she's always known that she could take anything the world ever threw at her, she knows now that this one ordinary person possesses the power to shatter her.

But Terri's bright eyes are growing heavy-lidded, and she offers Joan a soft smile in response to what must be a look of pure terror.  She plucks Joan's hands from where they hang in midair and drags them slowly up the curve of her bare legs and underneath the oversized shirt she's stolen.

Joan's fingers ghost over the line where Terri's legs meet her hips, and the world goes out of focus.  She traces the band of Terri's underwear and hears in her own voice a rapturous exhalation as though from far away.

She can't do this.

"Terri," she tries to say, but she's not sure the word even sounds.  Terri's hands have found their way to the back of Joan's neck, and she's teasing the fringe at the base of Joan's hairline, and it's all just _too much_ , and Joan's fingers have begun to curl into the band she's been tracing of their own volition.

What if Terri turns on her again?

What if Joan leaves for work, and by the time she's slogged through whatever nonsense awaits her at Wentworth, Terri has already gone back to her mustachioed boyfriend?  What if Terri stays for a week, even two?  How long will it take for Joan to let down her guard, to think perhaps she might not need to live in constant fear of returning home to newfound emptiness, and how much worse will it be when it finally happens?

Will Terri even say goodbye this time?  It would have been kinder to leave Joan with her cruelty.  Unpleasant and unattractive, Joan has known all her life.  A weak, gutless old woman, Joan could have lived with.  A freak, that one she feels in the marrow of her bones.  But to follow that with a frantic cry at the door, a strangely silent phone call, a sobbing mess on the front steps, a starry-eyed woman wearing her shirt and sitting in her lap and swearing their only enemy was fear, that this moment is their salvation and not just another sickening spiral in their magnificent downfall?

"Joan?"

"Hm."

Cold, soft hands on her face.  The world comes back into focus, sharp and unfeeling.

"You're trembling."

Joan licks her lips, takes in a slow, unsteady breath, and then she makes a choice.  Never impulsive, never without purpose.  She turns her hand and slides it beneath the band of Terri's underwear, and when next Terri utters Joan's name, it isn't a question.

Joan slides her fingers along the wetness between Terri's legs, and she watches the way Terri's lips part, the way her brow furrows, the way her neck arches, with muted fascination.  She's sure now of what she wants to say, the promise of pain an anchor all its own in the unending misery of her existence.

"Do you remember what you said, Terri?" Joan wonders quietly.  "That you never wanted me?  That this was something you just..." she curls her lip, and she curls a finger inside of Terri, and Terri's breath catches "...put up with?"

"I didn't mean it," Terri breathes, and then again, "I didn't mean it, oh Joan, please, I didn't..."

"Yeah?" Joan feels the corners of her lips quirk upward, feels a twisted sort of satisfaction taking root somewhere in her chest at the look Terri gives her then, longing bordering on desperation, not dissimilar from the starry-eyed new officer who dared to ask Joan Ferguson for a favour.

"Well," says Joan with mock-nonchalance as she brings a second finger to join the first, "I suppose I could be persuaded to forget.  Seeing as you're so...eager."

Terri's response, far more than a choked attempt at Joan's name, is in the way she arcs her hips, presses herself into Joan's palm, and, when Joan does not counter her, rocks her hips away and back again.  When she meets Joan's gaze once more, there's a dark certainty in her eyes, and Joan can do nothing to stay the self-satisfied smirk that crosses her features as she watches Terri fuck herself.

"Please, Joan," Terri breathes.  "I want you.  I _need_ you."  She grinds herself into Joan's hand so forcefully that Joan provides resistance out of sheer instinct, and Terri rewards her with a little whimper that's positively beautiful.  "Isn't this proof enough for you?"

Golden sunlight is streaming through the windows now, casting refracted patterns over the arm of the sofa and the outline of Terri's bare thigh, the light strange, unpredictable and ever-shifting, but undoubtedly hopeful.  Joan feels curiously at peace, not quite fully present in the moment when she feels Terri contracting around her fingers, sees her unravel in shades of gold as the morning light finds her. 

Terri calls out her name, loud enough for the neighbours to hear, and then she clutches Joan's face between her hands and kisses her nose and her lips and her forehead, and Joan can see her mouthing _I love you_ over and over, but barely registers the sound.

Terri's lips find Joan's ear, and her cold fingers find their way beneath Joan's robe, but Joan pushes her away, as gently as she knows how, with vague utterances of "I'd better get going," and "Another time, love," and hardly even winces when the familiar and forbidden word falls from her lips.

She pauses at the doorway to the foyer, hand gripping the frame, more for support than she'd like to admit.  "You're welcome to stay here, of course," she hears herself say.

 _As long as you like_ , she narrowly avoids adding.


End file.
